Developer: Ethan's Secretions
Publisher: indie.io
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Tomb of the Bloodletter – Review
Roguelikes and roguelites come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from simplistic-looking titles such as The Binding of Isaac to more visually impressive titles such as ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN. Most of these titles revolve around action-packed combat, where you’ll have to keep your wits about you not to meet your untimely demise. Today, however, we’ll be taking a look at a roguelike that handles things differently. Instead of fast-paced hack-and-slash mechanics, you’ll have to form and type words to crack the skulls of your enemies. While Tomb of the Bloodletter provided us with a few laughs and put our gray matter to work, we found the content to be fairly limited and perhaps a bit too difficult at times.
Story
Inside a mountain, sealed away beyond the reach of humanity, there lies an ancient glyph, the Bloodletter, which at one point in history almost destroyed our world. As it’s so dangerous, it was not for mortal beings to ever control. Time has passed, and humans have nearly forgotten how dangerous the Bloodletter truly is. Greedy grave robbers are making their way to the Tomb of the Bloodletter in order to find it, steal it, and use its powers for their own personal gain. This is pretty much all there is to the story, and while it’s basic, we still appreciated the small introduction before starting the game.
Graphics
Tomb of the Bloodletter utilizes a pixelated graphical style with simplistic backdrops but cute and silly monster designs. There is some visual variety when it comes to the aforementioned enemies, backdrops, and the symbols of the different so-called Magicks. The game has a simple look, but it works for what it wants to be, and we could appreciate the almost child-friendly visuals here. We would have perhaps liked it if the healing and attacking animations had a bit more flair.
Sound
The sound design isn’t too bad per se, but it didn’t wow us. This wasn’t a huge issue, as Tomb of the Bloodletter is one of those games you can easily have running in the background while you think about what words to type that would grant you the edge in combat. As there are no time limits, it’s ideal to crank up the volume of your favorite tunes while playing. That being said, the music in the game isn’t bad at all, and the SFX are decent.
Gameplay
Tomb of the Bloodletter is a roguelike ‘dungeon crawler’ where you’ll have to type words to deal with your enemies. In this case, however, you don’t have to type specific words within a certain time frame, but you’ll have to come up with your own words. On top of that, not all words will do, as certain letters will have ‘Magicks’ attached to them, which can grant you buffs, debuffs, dish out damage, and so on. The concept itself is straightforward, but Tomb of the Bloodletter is a very unforgiving experience, especially if you’re a non-native speaker. On top of that, the RNG truly makes or breaks a run here.
Truth be told, there isn’t that much more to say about this one. You start a run, and will have to type a three-letter word in order to form your first route. After that, it will be a four-letter word, and so on. You can type any word you like for your route, but it’s best to think of a word with letters that have Magicks attached to them. Each letter will correspond to a dungeon room, and the rooms that have a magick attached to them provide you with a stat boost, heal, or other upgrade. In combat, you’ll also have random magicks appear that are attached to random letters, and it’s your job to try and utilize these in the best possible way. You can use the same magicks multiple times in the same word, meaning you might be able to deal a lot of damage, heal yourself multiple times, etc. Enemies dish out a lot of damage, have nasty debuffs, and can block certain letters, making it really hard to sometimes even survive the first few rooms. As you progress, things get trickier, but you are able to unlock a few new characters, who have different passives.
Conclusion
Tomb of the Bloodletter is a fun take on the roguelike genre, but it also feels a bit brutal and basic for really long play sessions. The game does have the right atmosphere and also has a lot of charm, but it’s best enjoyed in short bursts and is very reliant on luck and RNG. We quite enjoyed ourselves with this bite-sized dungeon crawler, but we don’t see ourselves revisiting this one for the foreseeable future, as we feel like we saw everything the game had to offer. If you’re looking for a simplistic roguelike that puts your brain to work, then this one is still worth checking out.
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